


How To Fix a Broken Reaper

by Roxiroon



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 11:36:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15314643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roxiroon/pseuds/Roxiroon
Summary: The Thompson sisters still live on the streets of New York, but things begin to change when Patty has reoccurring nightmares where she's trapped in another person's body as they're being tortured. She knows she has to save them, but who she and Liz find are unlike anything they'd ever expected.(I started this last year and never really finished, so it may end up being a one-shot. Feel free to slaughter this story.)





	How To Fix a Broken Reaper

_ That night I thought for sure I felt something stir beneath the city. Below the subway, the black market, the crevices where even the most deadly creatures take root. And though I had never felt its presence before, somehow I knew that they had existed down there long before me. An ancient being, one that struggled and suffered. _

 

_ I could feel their pain in my own body as I slept. They were suffocating, perhaps someone was choking them. _ No, there’s a collar around their neck, I can feel it.  _ The pressure against my own throat felt as thick and heavy as iron, and as I strained away from it, I felt something drag behind. A chain. _

 

_ My eyes screwed shut tighter as blossoms of painful strikes came from an invisible source. They came quick and hard, relentless as a boxer and his punching bag. Except some of the blows were definitely more than just punches. It was as if all the attacks I had ever known— and then some— were raining down on me and this person. The most prominent was the whip creating burning lines down our backs. _

 

_ It hurt so much that I let out a cry. But he had already been responding in kind. With every bit of pain came his strangled, weak voice. A male voice without a doubt. Even though I could hardly hear his quiet screams, they shook me to the core. The ghosts of his tears stained my cheeks. _

 

Please… stop…  _  he coughed. My mouth was wet with blood, my throat was burning. When whoever he was begging to continued to beat him— the whip tearing the skin on his back, my back— he began to sob uncontrollably and shake like he was standing in a blizzard. The dream ended with those pleading words, each one following a final strike of the whip and a moan of anguish. _

 

Help… somebody… please.

 

I bolted upright in my bed, gasping for breath and waking up my older sister. The pain I felt before in the nightmare was completely gone. All that remained were his tears that we had apparently shared. And the memory of his voice.

 

I hugged my knees to my chest and silently cried a little longer.

 

“Patty?” Liz whispered, scooching to my side and holding me tightly. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

 

“N–not anymore,” I stammered, rubbing my eyes. “B–but it was so scary.”

 

“You had a nightmare?” She lifted my chin to face her. Big Sis was always able to comfort me with just her eyes before. But not now.

 

“I think it was more than just that. Like I… felt his pain.”

 

“Who?” She gave me a concerned glance. We didn’t trust anyone but each other. There was no one we could depend on in the whole city. But the way he was crying out… I couldn’t ignore it.

 

“I don’t know, but it was almost like we were sharing bodies. I think he’s being held prisoner under the city somewhere. And he was being… beaten.” Even before the dream had begun I felt that his body was covered in bruises and wounds and unfading scars. I distinctly remembered his head being practically untouched, even by the end. Why?

 

Liz looked scared for a moment, saying nothing at all. It was a rare occasion when she  _ didn’t  _ know the answer to something. And for once, I thought that I understood what happened better than she did.

 

“Maybe…” I hesitated, predicting I wouldn’t get a good reaction, “I should try to find him.”

 

“Patty, no. There's no one to find. It was just a dream.”

 

“I knew you would say something like that!”

 

“Because it's true. Neither one of us is going anywhere, end of story.”

 

“But—”

 

“But nothing! I won't lose you, Patty. I can't.” I remembered that look Liz gave me. A not-so-subtle reminder that if either of us was separated from the other, we’d be completely lost. I knew better than when I was younger— when I was allowed to act like the child I was. New York was not a kind place and it would eat up anyone who wasn’t prepared.

 

That’s exactly what I feared for him.

 

I said I agreed with my sister, for now at least. But I still couldn’t shake the fear I had for the boy. As I slowly fell asleep, I thought I might be with him again. I wouldn’t until the next night.

 

* * *

 

As I continued to have these strange dreams, night after night, I began to notice a few things. They didn’t flow in the same pattern, some nights he was being tortured, others he would simply lie and ache. The collar that kept him chained to the wall was never removed, steadily growing tighter every night. Every time getting harder to breathe.

 

I felt that he was starving, his stomach growled at the beginning of most dreams. Nobody talked but him, and even that was debatable. He never spoke when he was alone, only begging for his rescue from the never-ending pain.

 

That abuse and the fear he was enduring, I just wanted to put it to an end, to save us both.

 

The final night started off completely silent. I only knew I was with him because I felt the marks on his back and the hard place on his stomach where he’d been kicked the night before. His entire body was freezing but he didn’t have the energy to even tremble. He was barely breathing, his chest rising barely a fraction of an inch. I thought this time he was on the verge of death.

 

Then something happened that I never thought would. I could just barely see out of his eyes. I stared up at the wall before me, the one his neck was chained to. The low light illuminated his arms, this time cuffed together and bruising at the wrists. I think he tried to get up, but his legs protested; he rarely used them from what I remember.

 

Painfully, he turned to the other side, and it was nothing but concrete flooring followed by darkness. The exit was nowhere to be seen.  _ Where could they be keeping you?  _ Then I wondered: if I could hear everything on his end, did it work the same way for him?

 

“Can you hear me?” I muttered.

 

An almost inaudible gasp escaped his lips. “H–h–help, please,” he croaked. The pressure on our throats was unbearable, it only got worse when he spoke. “C–can’t… _breathe_.”  Suddenly he started coughing and splattered blood on the ground before both our eyes. I realized I was the one shaking for once and not him.

 

“Y–you… ” I stuttered, “you have to help me find you. Can you tell me where you are?”

 

“I—” His voice was cut off when I heard a door slam open. Then I heard him whimper. “I'm sorry. I–it’s too late.”

 

The last thing I felt before waking up again was his body being yanked off the ground by the collar, hearing him struggle for air and plead for mercy, and his head colliding with the brick wall. Then I heard his voice but could no longer feel his pain.

 

_ S–s–sorry… so v–very... sorry… _

 

“No! Don’t leave!” I screamed, back in my own skin. I cried angry, frustrated tears. The boy could be dead right now and there was still no way to help him. “Come back... ” I tried to go back to bed, knowing there was no point. The dream only happened once every night.  _ That was probably my only chance. _

 

“Patty?” Liz whispered.

 

“Go away! You don’t care!” I breathed heatedly.

 

“What are you talking about? Of course, I care!”

 

“Not about him.”

 

“Him, who?”

 

“Who else?! I’ve been having those dreams every night; where I’m in his body and I feel everything he feels. He’s always managed to tough it out, but now…” I choked back a sob. “ _ Now he might never come back. _ ”

 

“Patty…”

 

“When he reached out to me, he must have been depending on me. How can I help if I don’t know where he— ”

 

Suddenly I saw a light out of the corner of my eye. It was some sort of glowing blue wisp that wafted through the air like a cigarette cloud. I could hear his short, shallow breathing and my heart skipped a beat. When I got up and tried to reach out for it, the wisp moved in another direction, growing darker in hue as it went further.  _ You’re trying to show me the way. _

 

“Big Sis,” I said, looking in her direction. She was staring at the blue aura in awe. “We can’t leave him down there anymore. He’s suffered too much. Whatever this thing is and what I’ve felt, that proves it.” I walked over and hugged her. “Please, Lizzy.”

 

She gave me a look and then heaved a long sigh. “You better be right about this.”

 

I addressed the wisp, not sure if he could hear me through it or not. “Can you take us to him?”

 

**“Hurry,”** it replied before wafting out of the window and into the street.

 

* * *

 

After what seemed like hours of running through the busy streets of Brooklyn, the wisp led us down a subway tunnel that hadn’t been used for decades. The luminous cloud guided us in almost total silence, save for when the boy’s breathing hitched or he began coughing. Every time it happened I jumped a little, worrying that one of those breaths was the last he would take.

 

“I can’t believe someone could be living down here,” Liz murmured. “It gives me the creeps.”

 

“We won’t be down here for long,” I said. “I have my lock-picking kit and you here to guard my back.”

 

“Yeah, but Patty, do you know how many people we could be going up against?”

 

“No… but it doesn’t matter. I’ll do anything to help him.”

 

She groaned behind me.

 

The wisp stopped dead in its tracks in front of a door that had rusted shut. We both tugged at it until it gave way, leading to another flight of stairs.

 

**“Hurry,”** it repeated. I flew down the steps as fast as my legs would permit, hearing Liz lag behind. Only a year older than me and yet she had so much less energy.

 

At the last few steps, I jumped to the floor and looked around. It was like a dungeon down here, a long, dank hallway stretched out before us with cells on both sides. The only sign of life was a small light at the end of the corridor. “Is that where he is?” I wondered aloud.

 

**“Save him,”** the wisp breathed, flowing down to the door and creating a path of light before disappearing completely.

 

“Well that was ominous,” Liz said. “C’mon, we should hurry.”

 

“Right,” I agreed.

 

Out of nowhere I slipped on something wet and fell backward. “Patty! Are you okay?!”

 

I groaned as I sat up. “Yeah, I’m fine. I just—” I froze up as I saw that I slipped in a small puddle of blood. The sight was enough to make me want to vomit. “We need to find him.  _ Now. _ ”

 

I sprinted the rest of the way until we finally made it to the door.  _ He’s here. I can feel it. _

 

“I’m coming,” I whispered, shakily grasping the doorknob and slowly opening the door with a long, slow creak. I wasn’t prepared for what I saw.

 

Surrounding us were the bodies of men with all the weapons I’d pictured in my mind. Their disembodied souls hung over them, giving the room an eerie red glow. Kishin eggs.  _ But what killed them? _

 

My eyes shifted to the chain on the wall and slowly followed it down to where it attached itself to the collar around his neck. It was squeezing the life out of his damaged body, every breath a laborious task. That body, bearing the pallor of a ghost, was bleeding out from the countless stripes on his back, which was facing us. The boy had raven black hair and strange white lines that stretched halfway across his head. He was shaking on the cold, hard ground, wearing only a pair of boxer shorts. I couldn’t see his arms yet but his ankles were shackled together and his legs were covered in cuts. A puddle had grown where he lay in a crumpled heap.

 

I cautiously walked closer, not wanting to startle him. The other side was just as bad. His chest was mottled with bruises and gashes, and on his stomach, there was a giant mark like the toe of a boot. His wrists were in manacles too heavy for even me to lift that dug into his skin, staining it red.

 

Finally, I saw his face. Someone had blindfolded him, that’s probably why I could never see until before. His lips were tinged blue from the lack of oxygen, I knew I had to get the collar off of him right away. But he had to see me first; so he would know I wasn’t there to hurt him. I knelt down, gingerly moved my hands behind his head and untied the blindfold. His eyes fluttered open, completely hazy but oddly mystifying. They were golden colored, dark near the pupil and steadily lighter the further out you went. What creature had eyes like that?

 

When he finally focused on my face his breath caught in his throat, panicking. “Shh, it’s okay,” I whispered, reaching to pet his head. He flinched away from my touch and I drew back. “It’s me, remember?” Confusion flashed on his pale face.

 

“Don’t you recognize my voice?” As I looked at him I noticed that his forehead was bleeding, immediately recalling what I saw before I woke up. Someone threw him against the wall. “You hit your head…”

 

He tried to speak but went into a coughing fit. The same wet cough that made him spit up blood. I didn’t wait for him to try again and began working on the collar. All the while he stared at me, silent as if he was holding his breath in anticipation. Within a few minutes, a resounding click came and the collar snapped open. His neck was cut and bruised and he lay there for a while, gasping up as much air as he could. He coughed up more blood but sighed in content that he could breathe again.

 

Liz and I had already started on the manacles on his wrists and ankles. When we were done he shakily sat up, ghosting his hands over where he was restrained. The boy looked like he would pass out again at any second. Hell, by now he should have died from blood loss. Everything he went through should have killed him. He was so frail and small, but he lived through it somehow. 

 

He glanced around the room at the carnage, standing up on thin, unsteady legs. I hopped up too in case he needed support. His breathing was still raspy and short, but he didn't seem too shocked about the bodies.

  
The boy turned to look at me. His golden eyes were full of tears. “ _ I'm... free… _ ” he whispered. He swayed a little as his eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he staggered backward. I caught him before he collapsed on the floor.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, thanks for staying 'til the end of the chapter! Please tell me how you felt about it so I can improve! And, If you'd like to buy me a coffee, I'll have a link in my profile!


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